The worked example effect indicates that learning by studying worked examples is more effective than learning by solving the equivalent problems. The expertise reversal effect indicates that this is only the case for novice learners; once prior knowledge of the task is available problem solving becomes more effective for learning. These effects, however, have mainly been studied using highly structured tasks. This study investigated whether they also occur on less structured tasks, in this case, learning to reason about legal cases. Less structured tasks take longer to master, and hence, examples may remain effective for a longer period of time. Novice and advanced law students received either a description of general process steps they should take, worked examples, worked examples including the process steps, or no instructional support for reasoning. Results show that worked examples were more effective for learning than problem-solving, both for novice and advanced students, even though the latter had significantly more prior knowledge. So, a worked example effect was found for both novice and advanced students, and no evidence for an expertise-reversal effect was found with these less structured tasks.

Nievelstein, F., Van Gog, T., Van Dijck, G., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2010). Instructional support for novice law students: Reducing search processes and explaining concepts in cases. Applied Cognitive Psychology. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1707Reasoning about legal cases is a complex skill that imposes a high working memory load, especially for novice students. Not only do novices lack necessary conceptual knowledge, searching through the information sources that are used during reasoning can also be assumed to impose a high additional working memory load that does not contribute to learning. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of supporting novice law students’ learning by (a) providing the meaning of important concepts in the case and (b) reducing the search process by providing a condensed (relevant articles only) rather than a complete civil code. Results show that performance on a test case (for which they had to use the complete civil code) was significantly better for participants who had used the condensed civil code during learning. Performance on a conceptual knowledge post-test was significantly enhanced when students had received the concept explanations during learning

is senior onderzoeker bij het Nederlands Studiecentrum Criminaliteit en Rechtshandhaving (NSCR) te Amsterdam. Prof. dr. F.L. Leeuw is directeur van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-en Documentatiecentrum van het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie en daarnaast hoogleraar Recht, òpenbaar bestuur en sociaal-wetenschappelijk onderzoek aan de Universiteit Maastricht. Mr. drs. M.P.C. Scheepmaker is hoofdredacteur van Justitiële verkenningen.

Quantitative recidivism risk assessment can be used at the pretrial detention, trial, sentencing, and / or parole stage in the justice system. It has been criticized for what is measured, whether the predictions are more accurate than those made by humans, whether it creates or increases inequality and discrimination, and whether it compromises or violates other aspects of fairness. This criticism becomes even more topical with the arrival of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act. This article identifies and applies the relevant rules of the proposed AI Act in relation to quantitative recidivism risk assessment. It does so by focusing on the proposed rules for the quality of the data and the models used, on biases, and on the human oversight. It is concluded that legislation may consider requiring providers of high-risk AI systems to demonstrate that their solution performs significantly better than risk assessments based on simple models, and better than human assessment. Furthermore, there is no single answer to evaluate the performance of quantitative recidivism risk assessment tools that are or may be deployed in practice. Finally, three approaches of human oversight are discussed to correct for the negative effects of quantitative risk assessment: the optional, benchmark, and feedback approach.

Catholic Church sexual abuse cases have received worldwide attention, with lawsuits and nationwide investigations reported in various countries. This study examines a procedure—a hybrid between tort litigation and a victim compensation fund—that not only allowed sexual abuse victims to seek monetary compensation on an individual basis, but also nonmonetary relief, including an apology, recognition, and measures against those responsible for the abuse. The publication of all decisions offers a unique opportunity to analyze what victims pursued by filing a claim, whether what they were offered matched their objectives, and what impacted the probability of victims obtaining certain types of nonmonetary relief. After analyzing 1,237 decisions, this study reveals a mismatch between what victims sought and what they were offered. Surprisingly, the presence or absence of a few panelists (out of 27) turns out to be the best predictor of whether adjudicators ordered nonmonetary relief. Consequently, whether victims obtained nonmonetary relief did not only depend on a proper legal infrastructure, but mostly on the mentality and attitudes of those participating in the system.

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Empirical Legal research (ELR) has become well established in the United States, whereas its popularity in Europe is debatable. This article explores the popularity of ELR in Europe. The authors carried out an empirical analysis of 78 European-based law journals, encompassing issues from 2008-2017. The findings demonstrate that a supposed increase of ELR is questionable (at best). Moreover, additional findings highlight: -An increase for a few journals, with a small number of other journals showing a decrease over time; -A higher percentage of empirical articles for extra-legal journals than for legal journals (average proportion per journal is 4.6 percent for legal journals, 18.9 percent for extra-legal journals); -Criminal justice journals, environmental journals, and economically oriented journals being more likely to publish empirical articles than other journals; -More prestigious journals being more likely to publish empirical articles than less-prestigious journals; -Older journals being more likely to publish empirical work than younger journals, but not at an increasing rate; -Journals being legal/extra-legal, journals in a specific field, journal ranking, or the age of the journal not making it more (or less) likely that the journal will publish empirical articles at an increasing (or decreasing) rate.Considering the lack of convincing evidence indicating an increase of ELR, we identify reasons for why ELR is seemingly becoming more popular but not resulting in more empirical research in Europe. Additionally, we explore interventions for overcoming the obstacles ELR currently faces.

In this article, we test the extent to which decisions by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court (ECC) are predicted by non-legal variables. Our theoretical argument proposes that not only the presence of public actors as plaintiffs-especially those working for the executive branch-but also political salience, i.e., the degree of importance attributed to a case by the government and public opinion, plays a crucial role in explaining the outcome of judicial decisions. Original data on all abstract review decisions issued by the ECC (2008ECC ( -2016) is used to test our argument. We control for possible selection effects, incorporating a novel measure of the overall quality of argumentation and strength of cases brought before the ECC by both public and private parties, in the form of an expert survey. Consistent with our argument, the results show that even when controlling for a wide range of potential confounders, norms are more likely to be struck down by the ECC when (1) public officials claim unconstitutionality than when nonpublic parties do, and (2) cases are reported by media. In the light of the Ecuadorian case, we conclude that the formally powerful ECC is quite sensitive to governmental influence, even under an improved situation of de jure judicial protections.